SPEAKER_03: It's very hard for a start-up to say I'm going to choose not to sell or make my app on an iPhone because I don't agree with them. It's almost like we're as you know app makers or or you know creators We have to build for where the people are and when more than 50% of the population is on a particular platform It's hard to give that up but at the same time like if we don't speak up if we don't share our experience and if we don't explain that You know creating new products is harder because of the fact that one company controls this ecosystem
SPEAKER_03: It won't change
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Get 30 off your first subscription order of ketone iq at hvmn.com twist All right, everybody welcome back to this week in startups as you know, apple is the most valuable company in the world
SPEAKER_02: By their market cap at least over three trillion dollars and it controls access to the world's most valuable consumers via their smartphones and the app store
Going to war with them even if you're a startup especially it's pretty crazy, but the regulatory landscape as you know Has shifted over the last couple of years getting a little hawkish on big tech and people are starting to monitor these big companies For when they do things that are anti-competitive uncool
And recently both startups and larger companies have started to fight back against apple and they're doing it in public A bunch of examples of this you may have seen the smartwatch company masimo They just had a huge legal win against apple which was forced to disable its blood oxygen functionality in the series 9 watches Due to this patent dispute this watch right here You can't buy it anymore and epics ceo tim swinney took on both apple and google over their app store fees Spotify issued a formal complaint in the eu against apple's app store rules a couple years ago And that complaint turned into a full-on eu investigation and according to bloomberg the eu is expected to ban any abusive app store rules Against apple's music streaming rivals, so Uh, we've had this reoccurring theme even 37 signals friends of the pod here. Jason freed and david hanmeyer hansen dhh They've been public calling out apple's app store practices for years as they struggle to get their apps approved But another example which I find the most fascinating if i'm being honest is beeper. This is a tiny startup
That lets android users do something really cool, which is have blue text bubbles when they're uh, you know An iMessage which you know can break all of your iMessage groups when somebody from android comes in
And apple didn't like that. So they shut down beeper's app about three days after it launched in december
We asked the ceo to come on the show and talk about it. He was nice enough to say yes
So welcome back to the program
uh eric
Mijakovsky
Did it get your last name correct?
SPEAKER_03:
You got it. Oh, thank goodness. Now last time you were on was uh, I guess we talked about pebble your previous startup. Yeah
SPEAKER_03: Yeah back in the day back in the day so you've been running this company
SPEAKER_02:
Uh beeper maybe you can just explain to everybody what your mission is with beeper what you're trying to accomplish What the app is supposed to do for consumers and then we'll get into the back and forth dispute with apple
SPEAKER_03: So what you mentioned earlier is kind of a subset of our overall Mission we're building a universal chat app
One app that lets you chat with anyone on any chat network
The idea came to me actually, you know while I was at pebble I You know would look down on my phone and see a folder full of chat apps that all kind of did the exact same thing Except with a slightly different subset of my contact list on each app I'm a canadian. I live in the states. I've lived in europe. I spent a lot of time in asia during the pebble days And i've just kind of collected friends on Basically every single chat app out there uh
SPEAKER_03: And I was looking down at my phone and seeing all these different apps and I just figured there's got to be a better way
and
We kind of had this technology if you remember like 12 15 years ago There were a bunch of universal chat apps like adium or game or trillion meebo So we had that we had it was in our hands and then it slipped through our fingers during the transition to mobile That's when for people who don't remember that was like yahoo messenger aol instant messenger there were all these desktop im apps
SPEAKER_02: I think you icq right which was bought by aol and I think aol
SPEAKER_02: Got dragged kicking and screaming and yahoo everybody but eventually they all decided hey interopterability
Would be a good thing for everybody
SPEAKER_03: That's when xmpp kind of came around and google talk supported it facebook messengers supported it Uh, I chat actually supported xmpp back in the day and that kind of Beautiful period didn't translate into mobile That's when the big tech companies threw the guards up through the through the walls up and created these siloed chat Apps kind of linking the chat client to the chat network so for example only the whatsapp app can access whatsapp messages only the
SPEAKER_03: iMessage app can send and receive iMessages
So we started working on this in 2019
We built it on top of an open chat protocol an open source chat protocol called matrix And over the last three, uh, three plus years we've been building Um beeper, uh, we support 15 different chat networks, um, including whatsapp iMessage Telegram instagram like you name it. We've got it
And we have a desktop app an android app and an ios app
SPEAKER_02: And so it's a very simple value proposition for users one app to unite them all you authenticate All of your different apps in beeper and now I don't have to tab between iMessage Signal telegram whatsapp. I mean it is
It's arduous and painful and annoying to have to do this and uh, yeah if people are power users Why shouldn't they have the ability to do this? What would be the argument against
This that anybody could make credibly I think of this I think of that friction that you're describing
SPEAKER_03: As a tax that we pay on top of all communication By virtue of having so many different channels, which we can use to communicate. There's this overhead There's this extra process that we're always running in our brain To match up a given person with the network the last network that we use to chat with them on So that overhead while it definitely
Doesn't feel like it's arduous, but it's not like the end of the world. We obviously get through it
But that you know three to five percent extra effort that we have to do to basically do all forms of communication Is just this extra friction And our goal with beeper is to eliminate that friction and make it easy for you to chat and communicate with anyone regardless of which Network they're on and there are now some standards there have been standards for a while, but so people understand this
SPEAKER_02:
You know when you do email
Yeah, there's an email standard
and you don't have to
If you're an outlook user, i'm a superhuman user or you use gmail, whatever whatever you use for your email You shouldn't have to Create a new email address to talk to another person in another
Email
Network that would be insane and deranged and that's what they're asking us to do with these messaging apps And so the one that people are most frustrated with is iMessage iMessage Lock-in I believe is a major part of why people keep their iPhones every time I come off my iPhone and I test and i've done it Maybe three or four times since the iPhone came out. Yeah
SPEAKER_02: I you know I probably own maybe a half dozen android phones and
The thing that always gets me in trouble with my friend groups in the group chats is oh iMessage they Explain to the audience what apple is doing when they green message versus blue message you in a group thread And why they do that in your mind? So if you have an iPhone, there's actually only one application
SPEAKER_03: That you're allowed to use for texting it's called messages and it allows you to send sms
Text messages which are the green bubbles and iMessages which are blue bubbles
Sms is a telephony protocol that's used by the carriers. It is an open standard
But apple has a rule which says that only they can build an sms app for android There's no other alternative sms apps available on the app store. You can only use theirs They've bundled a service called iMessage inside this application And they've used sms as a as a means of bootstrapping their own chat protocol chat network So they did this I think was starting in 2011
And over time people became especially in the us conditioned to use sms sms was the backstop for all kind of communication I think all the europeans who are listening to this will think like oh What are those crazy americans doing with sms like we have whatsapp we have telegram you could switch to that but for some historical reason here in the states sms became the de facto standard for kind of text communication for chat by building iMessage on top of sms Apple has made it very easy for people to transition over to using iMessage as their group chat Protocol or their you know, dm protocol between two people
That has made it hard for people to leave iphone for other platforms. Um when you
Put your sim card into an android phone like you decide to switch from uh, iphone to android There's no way to import your chat history over on your android phone And all of the conversations that you've been having with people over the iMessage protocol are not available, you know on an android There's no uh, apple doesn't make an iMessage app for android you ask another question Which is like what are the implications of not having say an android app for iMessage? So you as an iphone user By default when you use the um the messages app Uh, if you're chatting with someone who has an android your phone will send an unencrypted green bubble sms message It's missing a lot of features that you might Uh have become used to with iMessage when you chat with someone over an android Who has an android phone you're sending out an unencrypted message. Usually the photos and video are much lower resolution You don't get features like being able to unsend a message or edit a message You can't see when they're typing or whether they've read your message or not
And when you add them to a group chat if that group chat was a blue bubble iMessage group chat it downgrades The moment that you introduce or add
The first android person to that group chat, right? And that's where you get ostracized and that's
SPEAKER_02:
Where this like actually results in people saying you got to use an iphone and the peer pressure starts. Yeah Okay, you've seen sunday night demo a ton of AI tools and we've learned that these tools are going to help you
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SPEAKER_03:
So
SPEAKER_03: Beeper has two apps We have one main app that we call beeper cloud that supports 15 different chat networks in one app And that's the one that has a desktop app an ios app an android app and it's still up and running, you know We have uh over a hundred thousand people that are using beeper cloud, but at the beginning of december
We decided to launch a new app called beeper mini
SPEAKER_03: Beeper mini was an android app dedicated to being a great iMessage client
For android we did two things that had never been done before we reverse engineered the iMessage protocol down to the over the wire kind of protocol And implemented that in the android app which meant that we had full end-to-end encryption between the beeper mini app and the iMessage servers And the second thing that we did that no one had done before was we figured out a way of associating your android phone number with uh Message so that if an iphone friend typed in your phone number or tapped on your name in the contact list Your number would actually come up as a blue bubble
SPEAKER_03: We launched the app on december 5th and within three days had over 100 000 users. It was a paid app so, you know two dollars a month pretty uh Three days. Yeah, yeah millions of dollars in revenue show up immediately. So, you know, hey for 25 bucks a year
SPEAKER_02: No problem with a couple million a couple hundred thousand people a couple million dollars in revenue immediately You've unlocked product market fit people want To have this product and you why shouldn't they have it and and then what happens after that?
SPEAKER_03: so a lot of people ask like what were we expecting would happen and
Here's what I expected
I believe that beeper mini actually increases the quality of experience for iphone users So you have an iphone you send a message to an android user before beeper mini. It was unencrypted. It was a green bubble It was a pretty crappy experience Beeper mini comes onto the scene that android friend of yours can now download the app Upgrade your existing chat to a blue bubble now it's encrypted. You could add them to group chats Uh, no problem No problems anymore
That was the state of the world that we thought would be
kind of
Great for both iphone users as well as android users again You kind of touched on this a little bit earlier like who would argue with that?
SPEAKER_02: uh only somebody who was trying to protect their
SPEAKER_02: monopoly
Yeah, but even so I feel like apple stands for privacy and security like that's what they put on their ads
SPEAKER_03: And our app actually increased the level of security and privacy between iphone and android chats and so logic says it should exist, right and
SPEAKER_02:
There's no way of getting around that logic and apple's got a long history of claiming that they would support open standards
SPEAKER_02: and then not
SPEAKER_02: Ultimately supporting I think you're referencing the uh, facetime announcement. So yeah, I mean when yeah
SPEAKER_02: That was back in the steve jobs era, right? Maybe you could explain to the audience and he said that facetime was going to be an open standard and uh,
SPEAKER_03:
Well, we're 13 years later and it's it's not
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, this is the tragedy I think of apple post steve jobs is that They they really could be bringing a lot more people into their ecosystem net net I believe If they made an iMessage app for android windows desktops, etc. And and they did that for itunes if you remember When itunes came out you could have an ipod on a windows machine as but one example of They are capable of doing this and they have done it in places where they feel they don't have a choice, right?
If they felt they didn't have a choice because they're up against spotify or whatever it is. They they did it with iMessage
They they don't have an app for android users or windows users or you know people who are not iphone users, which is bizarre
Um, they should have that yeah
SPEAKER_03: So apple took action to block beeper mini users from being able to send and receive iMessages And they even came out with a public statement um a couple days after explaining or trying to use the argument that they it was something around protecting users security and privacy by blocking
SPEAKER_03: You know third-party. Yeah services from sending iMessages which to me felt like
Double speak like 1984 double speak where they were actually making the experience worse for iphone customers
By blocking beeper mini and people don't know this but they are the majority of smartphone users here in the united states now
SPEAKER_02: they they've got essentially they're part of a duopoly and Yeah, this is I think the perfect place for the government to get involved and maybe say you know what? You should give users a bit more choice and apple has backed down at times They originally wouldn't let anybody use a third-party media player like vlc and open source one on phones and On their ipads, they wouldn't allow people to use other browsers than safari And they currently won't let you use things like beeper or they won't let you use other third-party app stores and they put up all these Roblox, but I think the developer community now is standing up to them
So maybe you could speak to why you chose I don't want to say to pick this fight but to not back down Why why you chose to do this and kind of hold your ground? And where is this? you know, um stalemate at with Apple and are you going to keep being able to produce this and this cat and mouse? Kind of uh back and forth to to make the technology work while they're trying to stop it
SPEAKER_03: so our our vision for the future is
It kind of stems from my love of science fiction. So I love reading sci-fi and you know, i'm actually just rereading the um,
uh
The three-body problem series. Oh, yeah, it's a great series. Excellent. You know epic space adventure and
SPEAKER_03: It said in the future
You know, you know, what doesn't happen in the future people people never have to discuss which protocol they're using for communication
They just use the technology to communicate it. And so when I look at kind of the state of the world here in 2024
it doesn't feel like so many elements of Today feel futuristic like the the ai kind of the llm, you know revolution feels like we are getting a taste of what's what's to come
SPEAKER_03: But when you look at communication and the you know
the the absolute like mess that's on our hands in terms of the number of networks and the number of apps and how every You know every month there seems to be more fragmentation It doesn't feel like the future and so our number one
Number one Goal our mission is to help people migrate to an open source chat protocol That doesn't force you to kind of align yourself with one of these big tech
Companies and that's one of the reasons why you know with beeper we didn't build yet another closed source chat protocol We decided to adopt an open source chat protocol so over time we really do think that
SPEAKER_03: People will be able to move to something more like email for chat and
Maintain these connections these legacy connections to existing chat networks While you know, we go through this kind of messy stage of having to migrate to an open standard Because in the future I really do think that if we do our jobs at beeper we'll be able to to live in a world where? It looks a lot more like email you'll have multiple clients You'll have multiple vendors and you'll be able to carry and take your friendship and your kind of chat list your connections To other platforms regardless of you know
SPEAKER_03: Which place you started at?
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I take it, um your venture back or did you fund it yourself this on your venture back?
SPEAKER_02: So I guess you know, we're on this week in startups. How do you manage this? With your investors and say hey, we want to fight this fight against apple
This is a big deal to take on um, they could file a lawsuit against you they haven't taken legal action against you which I think is
I think strategic on their part. They don't want to be seen as attacking a startup, but they have been blocking you But then you know, I read the justice department met with you I know you can't comment on that but the fade the federal trade commission has now commented on this the antitrust committee in
The senate. Yeah the senate
SPEAKER_02: Amy clobber jar. I know is involved in that and mike lee And so that's bipartisan They are pushing the justice department to take action here. They wrote a letter and apple is you know, uh, maybe It seems a little vulnerable at this point to more regulation So maybe you could speak to where you think this is all going to head. Do you think there is an outcome here where? apple is forced, uh to Provide interoperability or to use some standards
SPEAKER_03: So in some ways I feel like this all started a little bit with cambridge analytica in 2016, you know, we were riding high on mobile apps and
SPEAKER_03: There you know were so many big tech companies that could basically do no wrong, you know We believed that they had our best interests in mind that they were continuing to build new products that would like, you know, dazzle us each year and
The combined data that we had stored in these systems were only being used to create a better experience for us I think cambridge analytica was one of the first moments where we realized that that wasn't totally true the data that we had
You know uploaded and produced and created for all these big tech companies could also be used for really You know negative things that we did not intend and that started that kind of kicked off some efforts in Government as well as kind of in the popular culture to think that you know Maybe we need to start thinking about our own rights and you know freedoms
With our data and We're still kind of on the forefront of that wave. It hasn't crested it hasn't broke yet
But there's little simp. There's little Symbol signs that this is actually starting to take a toehold. So in europe, uh, the european commission recently passed a kind of gdpr-esque Piece of legislation called the digital markets act That defines, you know your rights and freedoms on the internet, uh, including a provision that mandates that the largest tech companies open interoperable interfaces for their networks Um, this was groundbreaking. It was the first time that really anyone had come out and said we need Open interfaces for these siloed chat networks. Uh, the law got passed Um just over a year ago and it's actually coming into force in europe on april 1st of this year So expect to see some big changes. Um, just uh today or yesterday I saw that facebook was allowing european customers To unlink their their um, their meta accounts So their messenger whatsapp and instagram accounts which previously were kind of involved together in one in one. Yeah kind of rat's nest
SPEAKER_00:
SPEAKER_03: They've now been forced to let people press a button and untangle these um, these accounts I think that you know The us hasn't passed any legislation to kind of affirm this this right that we have to managing our own data um, but we have been You know trying to make the case that this is something that not only is good for us as as users of this technology But also it sets a level playing field for startups to be able to build new Technology new products new new interfaces on top of you know your own personal data like your contact list and your message history
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and for people who aren't following it the justice department according to the new york times and other folks is in the late stages of And i'm quoting from the new york times here of an investigation into apple and could file sweeping antitrust case Taking aim at the company's strategies to protect the dominance of the iphone as soon as the first half of this year Said three people with knowledge of the matter and I think
iMessage is you know, uh here it's one of those components
SPEAKER_03: but specifically
SPEAKER_02: Investigators have examined how the apple watch works better with the iphone than other brands as well as how apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service They have also scrutinized apple's payment system for the iphone which blocks other financial firms from offering similar services. The people said yeah just last week
SPEAKER_03:
Uh, you mentioned you know at the top there. Um
Uh that apple took a feature out of the apple watch just because they lost a lawsuit rather than paying you know a royalty fee or something and I think
There's just so many of these little pieces of the puzzle that are falling into place Yeah that at some point, you know, there's going to be a straw that breaks the camel's back technology can change Nothing is constant in this world
SPEAKER_03: And if you look at the history of kind of computing over the last 30 40 years, you know, there are Waves and there are waves that crash and I I really do hope that you know as a
As an apple user myself i'm sitting in front of my macbook, you know a happy macbook customer I really do hope that they you know See the light on this issue and allow their own users to be able to have more power over how their you know technology works
SPEAKER_02: yeah, and so What is it like when the regulators? Come to you and and want you to be involved in all this. It's got to be a little bit of a distraction. Yeah
SPEAKER_03: It's pretty different. So
I went through kind of my first startup which was pebble. He mentioned. Yeah, uh just over 10 years ago We it was a crazy ride, right? We pebble was amazing. It was a kickstarter project if I remember correctly
SPEAKER_02: um And uh, first watch on kickstarter it went viral and we ended up selling, you know
SPEAKER_03: over 2 million units over the span of three years and um I posted a kind of A 10-year retrospective blog post a couple years ago about what that experience was like and especially towards the end as we lost sight of kind of the long term like I
SPEAKER_03: I wrote I wrote a much longer blog post about this and so if you're interested, please check it out Well, no, tell us what did you learn? Yeah
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, you know I was I was thinking about like
SPEAKER_03: Towards the end before we sold the company to um to fitbit like what what could we have improved? What could we have changed and the primary thing that kind of caused us to lose uh lose control of our destiny is we over We over manufactured we we we had one year where we miscalculated and we built more inventory than we could sell so that was the kind of
primary cause that caused us to um
to kind of enter that kind of um I kind of likened it to trying to pull the airplane up as we were we were heading down We were trying our best to pull it up and to pull out of that tailspin
um
But that's only the that was only the like factor that caused us to get into that there was a there's an underlying kind of broader problem which was that I didn't present a strong vision for the future of where I wanted to take the company and the technology Like we had a really strong vision coming out of our first Kickstarter campaign We you know introduced this new piece of technology that had that hadn't existed But that lasted for you know, two or three years that that that initial vision kind of powered us through but I didn't present that Next generation that you know, where is this going in the long term?
And I stand by that. I think that that was you know One of the biggest problems that that I had at pebble. I didn't kind of positively speak about what the future could be
um, but now with you know with hindsight there definitely were
Elements that made it harder for us to compete
um, and I'm very careful because I think that you know at the end of the day we were In control of most our of most of our own destiny, but the fact is is we were building a product 50 percent of our users Were iphone users and as we thought of every new feature that we wanted to add to pebble We had to consider what it would be like
uh to integrate that feature into
An iphone platform like we were building an app that was distributed through the app store We were competing with a watch the apple watch that was
Deeply integrated into the operating system um
Through api endpoints that we couldn't access ourselves like we didn't have the ability to Send and receive text messages for example on iphones and that turns out to be the killer app of watches after
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you know, um You'll be able to track your steps Does feel like when I see most people use their watch is to look at a message without taking their phone out
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so again like I I think with you asked like what is it like to kind of have interactions with these regulators? During the pebble days it didn't even cross my mind
SPEAKER_01: and I
SPEAKER_03:
Looking back there probably could have been some opportunities where we could have said, uh similar to what tile is doing now Um saying that look hey, this is this is like 50 more than 50 percent of the phones in the states are our iphones They the company that makes them apple not only makes iphones, but they also make this store that you know, the um, The software is distributed on they make a lot of the services that are bundled into the phone
and they uh
Yeah, they have this kind of stranglehold on how other people build products that work with their um with their phone
um
SPEAKER_02:
And I was a major I was a major tile users for a for a long time and then You know just because air tags are integrated like you're saying I had kind of no choice but to go with air tags Because they're built into the operating system and nobody's using or I shouldn't say nobody's in the tile network with the tile network has been deprecated because now you have Everybody using iphones and then tiles I think get penalized as like a tracker in a way air tags. Don't yeah
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and
Actually, I remember a Quote from another yc partner and he said that
Most startups don't live long enough to be able to have an impact in washington to be able to actually take action that could you know benefit them or or positively impact the startup ecosystem because A startup can live breathe and die in the span of months in washington things take Much much longer. I know some people that have been working on their particular fight for decades now Yeah, and that means that there's this like impedance mismatch between companies in silicon valley and startups in general and the regulators and the lawmakers that are trying to you know, honestly do do something that that improves the improves the world
SPEAKER_03: um, i've had much a much larger chance, um this go-around with beeper to be able to learn about how the dc kind of ecosystem works and
I think what i've realized is that startups can play a role but it uh It's not going to produce results in the same time frame that you know Your your next sprint or your next uh product release is on your runway
SPEAKER_02: Let's be candid like your runway might be 18 months if you're a startup if you're lucky sometimes 24 or 36 You know if you're really lucky you got a ton of runway, but these things take five or ten years to settle If you're lucky and so you're right. There's two different timelines going on here and These these companies can bully you into submission. Yeah
SPEAKER_03: the place where startups can have the most impact is making decisions about what products they build and the platform and ecosystem that they work with and it's hard to look at the app store the the ios app app store and the the market that comes with it and say You know, I don't agree with their kind of decisions or I don't agree with apple the way that apple does business with developers and i'm gonna It's very hard for a startup to say i'm gonna choose not to sell or make my app on an iphone because I don't agree with Them it's almost like we're as you know app makers or or you know creators We have to build for where the people are and when more than 50 of the population is on a particular platform It's hard to give that up but at the same time like if we don't speak up if we don't share our experience and if we don't explain that You know creating new products is harder because of the fact that one company controls this ecosystem
It won't change
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Do the companies try to pay you off in your experience? Did they try to like buy your silence the apples of the world the googles of the world when they? You know kind of feel you're in this or do you hear stories about that or they're just like silent and they just let you Die look at what happened last week, right apple lost a lawsuit or lost a ruling in the epic v apple
SPEAKER_03: kind of saga and they were forced to allow Developers to link out of their apps to their website in order to process payment
And they could have abided by the letter of the agreement that the judge forced them to
Instead they did the polar opposite they said that if you want to link off to your other platform To the web to process payment. Sure you could do that, you know by all means but we're going to throw up a disgusting pop-up that warns people of you know, losing their firstborn child to to the website that they're about to click through and
that website's forced to track their users, um and Send apple a bill for 27 percent of whatever payment they make within seven days on on the web platform the 27 percent is their fee for the
SPEAKER_02: Running the app store. And so this is where the ftc and like regulation even if you're Libertarian or you believe in free markets when somebody has a monopoly or they're part of a duopoly in this case Uh, which by the way, I do hopefully is essentially just two monopolies. It's not Like it's a competitive landscape. They're just conspiring
SPEAKER_03:
When one player pays 18 billion dollars to the other player, uh, like google does to apple like there's no conflict there
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of commingling happen
SPEAKER_03:
Absolutely, but I think your question was like, you know, do they does apple? You know or these other players do they try to? Take individual action. I don't think so. I think like
SPEAKER_03: the like that action with the 27 pop-up like
they don't give a shit like they they'll do what they want to do and
that
those kind of actions are
The outcome of that and I think the the cherry on top is that
That happened during the same week that apple created or you know launched Their new computing platform their first new computing platform in over a decade And you know, they're trying to position this as a platform that developers are supposed to go out and you know Either translate their iphone, you know mobile apps To or create new experiences create new, you know, uh, things that didn't exist And they did it on the exact same week
SPEAKER_03: Yeah that they published that, you know new pop-up and you notice some developers are maybe well and developers are like
SPEAKER_02: You know what? I think netflix spotify a number of folks like yeah, you know what we're in no rush to develop And help you with your next platform. Sorry Um, we're just not going to participate, uh, which I thought was pretty telling I don't know if they'll eventually have to crack when it hits
SPEAKER_02: Critical mass if it ever does. I don't know you think that's you think this ar glasses are gonna As a technologist ever gonna click with people or is it so just problem is i'm an incorrigible hardware person at heart. Yeah, I
SPEAKER_03: can't
I have to I I just love I love hardware. I love you
SPEAKER_02: For sure. I haven't ordered one. I haven't convinced myself to do that
SPEAKER_03: Oh, but I do I do believe that you know, we should be experimenting and trying new, you know platforms I but do you think spatial computing do you think people want to wear something on their faces like this or
SPEAKER_02:
I
Is it a form factor issue or is it like?
People don't want the technology I had the original oculus I had every generation i've tried i've tried literally everything
SPEAKER_03: And of course at some point i'm gonna try it and I probably will be blown away and and love love that experience I haven't found something that clicks into Say, you know
That that's been a habit like the last I think Really mind-bogglingly cool new piece of technology was the air pots like it. Yeah was a
Uh, it was a moment like I haven't left the house, you know, really without without air pods in the last seven years They're super compelling. Yeah, I think I just had the um, I just had the founder of the rabbit
SPEAKER_02: Um, which you know took over cs. I don't know if you you must have seen it, right? So you're a hardware guy Actually a yc founder. Yeah, he's a former yc founder. Yeah, he's really cool and um,
SPEAKER_02: He was speculating us like what he wanted to do next. He was kind of riffing and you know, we just started
vibing on the pod
And I was like, you know, what do you think of air pods? He's like, yeah, you know, I think I could put the rabbit
In air pods and I was like, whoa. Okay. Now that's mind-blowing imagine The case of air pods if he if he made rabbit air pods, uh, or you know in buds And he was like I can make it right now by the way, and I was like, well, why don't you make it? So I have to make it like over the ear Um headphones and I was like, wow Can you imagine if you had over the ear headphones and inside of it was like a raspberry pi or whatever circuit board? And an lte connection And so when you said hey play this music or order me an uber or get my door dash or uber e it's it just did it
SPEAKER_02: Um, and you didn't have to have anything with you That'd be like a pretty dope device that we'd all pay for and i'm like that must exist in the world It doesn't really exist. There's somewhere in shanzhane or akihabara in japan. Maybe somebody's built built it
SPEAKER_02: But man, that could be a mind-blowing vision if you think about it and I don't know if we we actually uh,
SPEAKER_03: We had that vision at pebble back in the day. Um During the uh, the waning years in 2016 we uh created a product called the pebble core, which was a Headless a screenless android phone that was roughly the same size as uh, the airpods case And it was designed to be a kind of wireless tether for your pebble So we couldn't fit uh an lte modem into the pebble at the time But we could fit it into this kind of like basically the exact same size as an airpods case
SPEAKER_02:
Uh, so that was like your that little core was a little thing is put in your pocket that is your lte connection basically
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, and so I i'm a firm believer that technology is cyclical, you know, we can you know
SPEAKER_03: Have an idea like just like beeper, you know, we had
universal messaging um at one point and it kind of fell out of fashion or Technologically wasn't available but good ideas come back and they do
Uh, I think that will happen on um on wearables and uh, some people for now they can just use pebble
SPEAKER_02: consolidate all of their messages with the exception of iMessage and stay tuned because You know, uh, this is david and goliath uh, but it's happened before that the goliaths have gotten hit with the rock in just the right place and then they have to back down and They got to open stuff up. And so You know on behalf of the startup community We appreciate you fighting this fight and I think everybody should speak up now
SPEAKER_02: Everybody in the community developers and startups when big tech
Is acting anti-compatibility just stand up to them and just say like this is bs And you know, if you're if they try to crush your company then be vocal about hey, they're trying to crush my company And let's just amplify those discussions There's no reason if you buy a piece of hardware like an iphone That you shouldn't have the right to pick your browser pick your goddamn media player And if you want to use a different app store or if you want to buy books You know ebooks from amazon instead of apple books like you paid
I mean I this last phone was like fourteen hundred dollars. It's bonkers. I bought this phone eric The controller was like did you buy another laptop? And I was like no but like so we just got an eighteen hundred dollar charge from apple and I was like
Eighteen hundred dollars and like I was like, oh, that's my iphone 15
Was 18 hundred dollars with tax and everything. I mean I listen I bought the one with the highest memory and the highest storage but
That was bonkers when you think about it if we're paying all this amount and then they want us to put $4,000 goggles on our head man. Come on. Give us a break here apple. It's just how much do you need to win? That's the thing. I don't understand. You know, you squeeze so tightly the galaxy is going to slip through your fingers here And I think apple if you're gonna if you want developers to participate with you
Then be reasonable with them, you know, I don't think apple's being particularly reasonable here I think it's like a giant mistake for them to to do this. Um
We'll continue success eric and keep fighting the good fight. How do you make money? Uh with your startup now pretty simple. So we sell so we have a uh beeper, you know worked with 14 other chat networks
SPEAKER_03:
Pretty simple model we sell a subscription We think that that creates, you know a very clean relationship between the vendor and the customer
What's interesting is that every other chat network except for telegram telegram actually? Has a very kind of nebulous business model like in the case of iMessage, you know, they sell phones by locking you into the uh platform Whatsapp no one's really sure how they make money like there's you know, maybe the enterprise stuff
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, the business to business stuff is what I heard
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think at the end of the day like we want to make it very clear that your data is your own There's end-to-end encryption and you're in full control And that's why we've just decided to make it simple and we charge a subscription for using beeper eric
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for coming on the program. Good luck with everything if can people help you in any way in this fight Maybe just tweet some support
Tweet their sound and uh, start using beeper. We start using beeper That's actually the best thing you just go and i'm actually downloading in the background right here. All right, eric
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for taking the time and uh, thanks for coming back on the pod It's been eight years you're back and i'm going to download beeper and give you some product notes after I get it set up
SPEAKER_02: All right, brother. I'll see you soon and we'll see you all next time on the sweet starts. Bye. Bye
SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody. I talk to a lot of founders here on this week in startups and as an investor And they tell me the same thing over and over again. They want two things from me more face time and money They want me to invest in their companies and they want to spend time together So we've been working here on a new meetup program We call it founder fridays and founder fridays are an event by founders for founders This is an event that is hosted in cities by people like you if you're listening to this week in startups You're a founder. So what are you going to do at founder fridays? You're going to get together with other founders in your community It could be four or five of you It could be maybe up to 30 of you in a location pick a cafe pick a co-working space I like to go to a great mexican joint or maybe a dim sum restaurant, you know You can do shared food have a couple of cocktails. Maybe you do it on a friday you get together and you host it Now why is it important for founders to get together? Shouldn't you be at home? Just focusing? Shouldn't you be in the office just focusing on your startup? Well, if you get together with other founders true founders who are in the arena building like you are You're going to get a lot of value from that because you can trade notes with that other founder about what's working at your startup And what's not working the truth is if you're facing a problem There are hundreds of founders out there who have probably solved it already and instead of you Banging your head against the wall when you sit there and you talk to three or four founders You're having some dim sum. You're you're splitting the quesadilla some prahidas. Somebody say, oh, you know what? I had that same human resources problem. Oh, I had that same technical problem Oh, I had that same marketing problem and they might tell you about a tool or a service that'll solve that problem for you This happens over and over and over again when I do founder fridays with our portfolio companies now We're going to give you that same experience. But here's what I need you to do I need you to host this in your city. So you're going to go to thisweekinstartups.com Meetups, that's it And you'll see a landing page where you can sign up and you can say I want to host in my city now your city May already be hosting so you can just join that person and what if you go to this event? And you learn some go-to market strategy that 10x's your growth that might unlock funding or you might be talking to somebody They say hey, i'm a marketplace too. I'm not a competitive marketplace your marketplaces for used cars My marketplace is for hair stylists whatever your jam is whatever you're working on but they give you some technique that you didn't know about to Increase your supply side or get more demand in your marketplace and you 10x your business I see this happen all the time and founders are like mutants, right? And i'm like professor x here I'm trying to put on cerebro and find all the founder mutants in the world and then have you get together And do your own little meetup and here's what you're not going to have to deal with You're not going to have to deal with a bunch of service providers trying to sell you software or services And you're not going to have to sit through a bunch of passive Speakers you can listen to this week in startups and get the greatest speakers in the world on your own time And you're not going to have to pay for a ticket to a conference or get on a plane or fly somewhere No, this is about having an intimate experience with five ten Maybe two dozen other founders in your city. Please go to thisweekinstartups.com Meetups if you are a founder, this is for founders by founders only if you are not a founder This event is not for you. You can start your own meetup for lawyers accountants recruiters This is for founders by founders. We vet everybody to make sure you're a founder and if you host it It's a non-commercial event. Our first founder friday will start on february 2nd So please mark your calendars and we're going to do these on a rolling basis you can join an existing meetup if it's already occurring in your city or You and one or two other founders can start your own We're using a wonderful piece of software that we've invested in called river You can sign up for a river account just by going to thisweekinstartups.com Meetups, we've already got hosts and attendees lined up in san francisco new york city, toronto, los angeles, las vegas London and even in india, so this is your chance to connect and if you didn't hear your city name You can start your city go to thisweekinstartups.com meetups
